Hi I have found a good tutorial on bone rigging (Armatures) on YouTube which I thought I would share it with those members who would like to have ago and it was created using Blender and for those who do not know this a free program.

I have put the link info below; the gentleman who is doing the instruction has also a load of other tutorials on Blender it might be worth watching the tutorials on his Sensei Format under the playlists.

Doe’s anyone know of a tutorial that shows have bring the character from Blender into iClone 3DXchange I know about exporting but not sure which boxes to tick before export.

I believe that you want to do the procedure in Blender to "skin" the mesh/character to the armature, and then export it as an .FBX. (I believe there might be boxes for "materials" that you'll want to check to ensure that that exports with the character.)

However, if you are familiar with how to apply textures to objects/characters in Blender, and the materials do not transfer over with the .FBX imported character into 3DEXChange, you should be able to apply the textures just by accessing them from whatever folder you in which you stored the textures, and then apply them to the "diffuse" box for materials in 3DEXChange. Now, sometimes it can be a multistage process.

Example: You might have a material for the head, another for the body (which may also include clothing textures, another for hands....it really depends on just how the character was textured in Blender. If the pictures for the textures are not named for easy recognition, it can be a tedious trial and error process to get the right texture onto the right body part...and it depends again on how many body parts were uniquely textured. Sometimes, you can texture the entire mesh in one shot, other times, again, it might be by body parts.)

Then there's the matter of rigging the character in 3DEXChange. I still need to learn how to master rigging characters so that they have moving mouths and eyes/eyelids. But I do know how to do the basic rig in 3DEXChange. (I have managed to get some XNALara characters-- characters that are usually ripped from video games and rigged for use in a 3D posing program called XNALara-- by other people, and have animated a few in iClone.)

"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."-Martok2112

Hi Thank you for info it will be a big help towards my go at character rigging.A problem I ‘am encountering at the moment is exporting from Blender into 3DXchange, what I mean by this that the gentleman on YouTube doing the tutorial kindly supplies work along figures one unrigged and one rigged so I thought before having ago at rigging I would have ago at exporting the rigged one I made sure his rigged man armature structure was set to octahedral ad when it gets into 3DXchange the bone structure are stick like bones and find it very hard to carry out convert.

Hi forget my last message I managed to work out the problem I just made the bone size larger and it works just fine in iClone only big problem now is the face count is huge (507904) I would say its just abit higher than the recommened 30,000 Ha back to the drawing board to try and lower it.

I registered for the forum and asked the question regarding face count reduction and received the below reply being new to blender not sure were to go so I have asked for screen shots if possible.

Cool, and thanks. You could open the original file up in Blender, make sure that the character mesh is selected (and not the armature, otherwise you won't see the modifiers) click on the Modifiers Tab (blue wrench icon) in the properties panel and on the "Multires" modifier lower the Preview value to 2 to get around a max of 15,000 faces or lower down to 1 for around 3,000 faces (Note this information is displayed above in Blender's info header). Since it sounds like you're just doing some test stuff, I would lower the preview down to 1 so as to not bog up your system (unless you have a really good system). Then click the Apply button of the Multires modifier and save or export the file (whatever your process is).